Fix Overexposed Photo with Photoshop

In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to fix an overexposed photo with Photoshop. It is really easy to do, and you will be surprised at how good you can get a picture to look that has been overexposed. To complete this tutorial, you will only need basic Photoshopskills such as basic navigation, and know how to duplicate and manipulate layers. Again, to fix an overexposed photo with Photoshop, you only need basic knowledge of Photoshop.

Now, to begin this tutorial…

Step One. The first thing that you will need to fix an overexposed photo is indeed an overexposed photo. We are not going to be doing any kind of fancy work here, just the basics this time. That is all that it takes to fix an overexposed photo.

Step Two. Now that you have a photo in mind that needs to be fixed, the next thing to do is to open it in Photoshop. You can do this by going to File>Open, and select your photo.

Step Three. The next thing that needs to be done is to duplicate the Background Layer (the original photo). This will show up as two layers in your layers palette with the same image on both layers.

Step Four. The next thing that we are going to do is to change the layer style of the top layer. We need to change it to Multiply so that the image will get darker. As you can see, the image should start looking better already.

Step Five. If one copy of the background does not make the overall image dark enough, you will want to copy the very top layer. And since the layer that you are copying is already set to Multiply, so will the layer that you copied from it. You can copy that layer as many times as it takes to make the photo look as normal as possible.

Step Six. What I like to do is to make the overall image a little darker than normal. Then I add a layer mask to that very top layer. Then, using the Brush Tool with the color set to Black, I erase the areas of the photo that I want to be lighter. A good example is an old photo that is overexposed. I would darken it with the steps above, and use a layer mask to lighten up someone’s face, hair, etc.

I hope that this tutorial has helped you to save an image. I use this technique a lot when asked to fix a photo that looks really bad due to overexposure.